Back in 2005 almost all my friends had jumped on the MySpace bandwagon, and I never could bring myself to join them. It’s 2010 now, and the same reasons I didn’t join then are the reason I refuse to add the site to my social media presence. Here’s why:

1. The Sound and the Fury
Nothing drove me crazy like opening a profile and having some loud obnoxious song explode from my speakers. I understand that this is a ‘feature’ you can disable, but nothing peeves me more than websites that auto-play sounds or music. In addition to this, the location of the music player wasn’t standardized, meaning that it took ever so much longer to locate and end the music. I’m not a person who keeps his volume low, because any audio hear is almost always chosen by me. Thus all that auto-playing music nearly gave me multiple heart attacks.

2. Usernames are not Real Names
I’ll confess, I really like my username. Contrapaul has served me well, and is both readable and memorable. What I don’t like are the names people use on MySpace. Locating a friend was (and is) like being a P.I.. If someone doesn’t have a clear picture, you have to examine the username (and the awful profile name) for a trace of something that might indicate that person is a friend. Because people love numbers and symbols, this can be a ridiculous task. Facebook isn’t perfect, but it’s so much easier to look at a name and know who a person is, than run a background check on a profile.

3. MySpace is a Haven for the Illiterate
Hear me out and understand that like many things I say, this is a generalized statement. In general, people on MySpace couldn’t care less if words are spelled correctly and sentences are structured in a readable format. In fact, people will go beyond simple apathy, and will purposefully spell things incorrectly, and use a terrible uppercase>lowercase>uppercase style for their writing. iS tHiS dIfFiCuLt To ReAd? You bet it is, and it doesn’t look cool either. Of all the ways to be original online, displaying a notable lack of spelling and grammar knowledge is not the way to go.

4. There is a Reason why People pay Designers
MySpace, like GeoCities before it is a perfect example of atrocious web design. Tiled backgrounds, gaudy colors, animated gifs, moving text, poorly placed page elements. These things have something in common; I despise them all, and they are all found on MySpace. I have no idea what makes someone think that a stock photo with some lame text about life is worth posting on their page, but then again, I also have no idea why lime green, purple, and stars are used together. Tiled backgrounds are ugly, and were ugly back when I used Windows 95. Taking that into account, few things are worse than tiled animated gifs.

5. It’s Your Birthday! Here’s an Image
What is it about MySpace that makes people pass around incredibly dumb jpgs and gifs? You know what I mean. If you don’t, here:

I’m sorry if your eyes are bleeding. These things drive me crazy, and drove me crazy. I can’t even explain why, but these image comments make me wish I had never even visited MySpace in the first place.

And that’s it. The 5 biggest reasons I never joined up with the scourge of social networks.